This week's announcement is a crucial part of a larger, 62-page document on consumer privacy rights. As PC World's John P. Mello Jr. noted, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo deferred to the bill and agreed to respect consumers when they don't want to be tracked online. Apple also complied, despite contrary reports.

Consumers have a right to expect that companies will collect, use, and disclose personal data in ways that are consistent with the context in which consumers provide the data.

This right runs counter against Google's upcoming privacy shift. Next month, the tech giant plans to aggregate your information from Google's 60-plus apps and services to better understand your habits. It is taking data from one context and applying it to another context. The bill of rights seems to be saying that the collection and uses of the data should be clear cut. Google is already telling its users about the privacy change, but within the context of this new bill, it's unclear if that's enough.

Consumers have a right to reasonable limits on the personal data that companies collect and retain.

The key term here is "reasonable", as in reasonable is a relative term. The White House is talking with companies, privacy advocates, and other stakeholders to define what is reasonable. The bill will mean nothing without follow through.

Consumers have the right to exercise control over what personal data companies collect from them and how they use it.

The trickier part of this right is regulating how companies use the data. Forget focusing on Apple: The superstore Target can use consumer data and patterns to determine when a customer is expecting a baby.

Grocery store loyalty cards and other tracking systems are well embedded now, and companies are used to using that information, however subtly, to better understand their consumer and increase sales.

There's no clear way for the government to cut companies from their precious data mines since, aside from very public examples like the Target pregnancy pattern, determining what companies are actually doing with the data requires inside access.